Introduction to

English Morphology

Morphology
the study of word formation

Words vs sentences
Meaningful building-blocks of language
highest

Sentence (consists of one or more clauses)

Clause (consists of one or more phrases)
Phrase (consists of one or more words)
Word (consists of one or more morphemes)
lowest
Morpheme

Words - again

giraffe
fraud
murmur
crops
just
pistachio

opposition
intellectual
crystallize
prewash
repressive
blackboard

Some more examples?

Feel free to check your dictionary.

Dictionaries
Word types vs word tokens
Types = +/- one million (listed in dictionary)
Tokens = +/- zillions (impossible to list all of them in dictionary)
Last week I stayed home but this week I am going out.
(How many words are in the sentence above?)
Words with predictable meaning (very limited
number)
Animal cries or their imitation (onomatopoeic cries of cats,
dogs, horses etc.)
Sound symbolism (crash, wham, bam, ouch etc.)

Lexemes and lexical items

Lexemes are families of words that differ only in their grammatical endings or
grammatical forms such as:
singular and plural forms of a noun (class, classes);
present, past, and participle forms of verbs (walk, walks, walked, walking);
different forms of a pronoun (I, me, my, mine);
Each of the words in brackets represent a single lexeme.
Hence lexical items are the ones listed in dictionaries and not all
the lexemes of a given word. In other words, one single entry for
a family of a lexeme.

Lexemes continued

put up with (endure,

tolerate);

kick the bucket (die);

collect my thoughts
(think clearly);

a fart in a windstorm
(ineffective);

go, going, went, gone

do, did, done
see, saw, seen
she, her, hers

one lexeme

What about the list below?

plain

careles
s

caring

willing

part

secure

fortunate

predictabl
e

+ ly

Un +

Can you predict their meaning?

Idiosyncrasies

Idioms
Proverbs

Consider the meaning of the

idioms below:
a close shave/ call
like a fish out of water.
a double-edged sword
cold feet/ chicken out

Any counterparts in Albanian?

 shpat me dy teha
luje mac kryt e bullit

si peshku nzall
kush nuk luan kmbt, nuk luan as dhmbt

pr nj fije foku
peshku ndeti, flterja nzjarm

Some idioms in Albanian

Consider the meaning of the

following proverbs:
"The pen is mightier than the
sword."
"When in Rome, do as the
Romans."
"The squeaky wheel gets the
grease."

Any exact counterparts in Albanian?

Consider the meaning of the

following proverbs:
Fjala/ lapsi sht m i mpreht se shpata."

Sipas vendit bhet kuvendi."

Fmija q qan e merr nna."

Exercises (homework)
Exercise 1
Exercise 2
Exercise 5